The Chicago Spire is going to be the new tallest building and tallest freestanding structure in North America at 600m when it is finished in 2011. It will also be the worlds tallest all-residential building.

Philadelphia City Hall. Due to a gentleman's agreement, City Hall was the tallest building in Philadelphia until 1987 when One Liberty Place broke that agreement (other buildings that were being built or planned would have broken it anyways). Now there are 15 buildings in Philly that are taller. The breaking of the gentleman's agreement that no one should build a building in Philly that eclipsed the 37 foot 26 ton statue of William Penn at the top has led to the creation of the Curse of Billy Penn. Since 1983 no major Philadelphia sports team has won a championship. The construction lasted from 1871 to 1901 and cost $24 million. The lengthy construction made the building a symbol for turn-of-the-century municipal corruption. It is the largest municipal building in the US and was the tallest habitable building in the world and was third only to the Washington Monument and the Eiffel Tower in height.

Chicago's John Hancock Center, the third tallest building in Chicago. Many may remember this building well b/c of it being featured in the opening sequence to the show "Family Matters".

Alright this will be my last post for a few days. I'm heading to NYC after work tomorrow night. The mecca of historic skyscrapers awaits. Although there really aren't too many that are really tall. If the Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte was in NYC it would be the 6th tallest building, just ahead of the Trump World Tower and behind the Citigroup Center.

"One of the tallest all-residential structures in the EU. I think it's in Sweden. "

That's the Turning Torso in Sweden, the only building in the world to twist by 90 degrees from top to bottom.

The Infinity Tower under construction in Dubai will be 330 m (1,083 ft) tall. It will also twist by 90 degrees. Each floor twists by 1.2 degrees compared to the previous one. The Turning Torso, in Sweden, is 190 m (623 feet) high.

Dubai: Dubai's latest mind-boggling project will be yet another global first - a fully rotating tower powered by the sun.

Project engineers say the Dh400 million Time Residences tower in the City of Arabia master development will turn through 360 degrees, its rotation mechanism driven by stored solar energy.

The project, which will put 200 apartments onto the market, is another addition to Dubai's list of world exclusives which will include the world's tallest tower, biggest mall and largest man-made island - even a collection of dozens of man-made islands dubbed The World.

In July, Dubai-based High Rise Real estate launched the Rotating Tower, a Dh175 million project in Jumeirah Village South featuring four rotating penthouses and a rotating villa with its own car lift.

Dubai Property Ring, developer of the 30-floor Time Residences, says it has gone one step better by launching a fully rotating structure.

"We didn't want to build just another building or tower, we wanted to create something unique - a precious place to live - a genuine contender to be one of the great buildings in the world," said Tav Singh, director of Dubai Property Ring, the Dubai arm of UK-based property investors UK Property Group.

Singh said the company plans to build 23 more rotating towers in each of the world's time zones with finance provided by investors linked to the company.

The Time Residences tower will include one- and two-bedroom apartments as well as duplexes and penthouses. Singh said unit prices have not been released, but sales are expected to start in March 2007. Buyers' payments will be held in an account managed by Dubai Property Ring and Colliers International, master agents for the project.

The project is the company's first foray into property development, forcing it to take on the services of established names in their respective fields.

The tower was designed by UK architecture firm, Glenn Howells Architects (the company behind the Birmingham Rotunda in the UK) and Palmer and Turner, the master developers of City of Arabia.

"A distinctive time line runs down the building that meets 12 o'clock markings on the ground and the podium, allowing observers to use the building as a fully functioning time piece - it's unique, it's ambitious and it's an honour to be involved from the start," said James Abbott, senior architect at Palmer and Turner.

Dubai's Kulkarni QS will manage the project, while the task of rotating an 80,000 tonne tower through 360 degrees over a seven day period has been handed to Nick Cooper, managing director of Bennett Associates, the British engineer who designed the drill machine that bored the English Channel Tunnel.

Cooper said state of the art bearing systems at several points in the tower will allow a power plant to rotate the base of the tower at 5mm per second using only 21 electic kettles' worth of solar power.

Construction is expected to start in June next year with projected completion in the first quarter of 2009.

The project will also be showcased at this year's Cityscape from December 4-6 at the Colliers International stand."

At 300 metres (990 ft), the Lighthouse will come a close second to the Eiffel Tower, which rises to 324 metres.

It is due to be completed in 2012 and will cost an estimated 800m euros ($1.05bn) to build.

Its twin structure will combine a rectangular base with a soaring, organic-shaped tower, capped by a field of wind turbines.

He added the building would be "a prototype for a green building" with a wind farm generating its own heating and a "double skin" of steel and glass to a self-cooling mechanism for the hotter months. "

"In skyscraper-crazy Dubai, tall isn't enough. In a design to be unveiled today in the oil-rich emirate, David Fisher, an Italian-Israeli architect, has dreamed up a 68-story combination hotel, apartment and office tower where the floors would rotate 360 degrees. Each floor would rotate independently, creating a constantly changing architectural form.

Each story of the tower would be shaped like a doughnut and be attached to a center core housing elevators, emergency stairs and other utilities. Wind turbines placed in gaps between the doughnuts would generate electricity.

WOW, the wind turbines are placed between floors, and each generates enough electricity for 50 families. So only 4 can provide power for all 200 families who will be resident, and the remaining more than 40 turbines can power other things!

Will produce enough energy for 10 skyscrapers!!!

Quote :

"Self Powered Architecture

Neatly stacked in between each floor is a horizontal wind turbine (58 in total). Each turbine can produce 0.3 megawatt of electricity and is said to be able to produce enough energy for 50 families. The turbines are integrated in such a way that they are hardly visible from the outside. Their close proximity makes them easy to maintain. “Producing that much electric energy without any implication on the aesthetic aspect of the building is a revolutionary step in tapping alternative energy sources.” Dynamic Architecture’s website also claims that combined with solar panels they could generate up to $7million worth of surplus electricity every year.

Each turbine can produce 0.3 megawatt of electricity, compared to 1-1.5 megawatt generated by a normal vertical turbine (windmill). Considering that Dubai gets 4,000 wind hours annually, the turbines incorporated into the building can generate 1,200,000 kilowatt-hour of energy. As average annual power consumption of a family is estimated to be 24,000 kilowatt-hours, each turbine can supply energy for about 50 families. The Dynamic Architecture tower in Dubai will be having 200 apartments and hence four turbines can take care of their energy needs. The surplus clean energy produced by the remaining 44 turbines can light up the neighborhood of the building. However, taking into consideration that the average wind speed in Dubai is of only 16 km/h the architects may need to double the number of turbines to light up the building to eight. Still there will be 40 free turbines, good enough to supply power for five skyscrapers of the same size."

"The Abraj Al Bait Towers is a building complex under construction in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Upon completion, the tallest tower in the complex would stand as the tallest building in Saudi Arabia and one of the tallest buildings in the world with a planned height of 577 m (1,893 ft).[1] If all seven towers are grouped together as one building, the structure would have the largest floor area of any structure in the world with 15.6 million square feet of floorspace. This is more than 4 million square feet larger than The Venetian Macau, which is the current world record holder.[2] The entire project is estimated to be completed in 2009."

Quote :

"In total, up to 65,000 people would be housed inside the towers."

Quote :

"The project will use four clock faces for each side of the Hotel tower, including 2 main clocks that are 80 meters high 65 meters wide. The other two clocks will be located 65 meters high, with an approximate width of 34 meters. The highest clock will be located 380 meters high, which would make it the world's highest clock."

I was there and saw that. I just thought it was something they did for that day. I know that they light it up red sometimes when Rutgers plays and red and green during the holidays. I just figured it was just a normal thing they do one day out of the week to change it up from the usual white light. I flew out of LaGuardia this morning and got to see Manhattan from above. Central Park is fucking huge! When you are looking at the Empire State building from the ground you realize it's tall, but don't realize just how tall it is b/c of the setbacks, which make it look smaller. When you see it from above though you really see how much taller it is than all the other buildings. Also it's funny how Wall Street is like an isolated area of skyscrapers b/c the rest of the lower part of Manhattan is old and doesn't have a lot of tall buildings. Oh and Citicorp what is the deal with you guys building a tall ass building way the hell out in Queens where nothing around it even comes close to its height? It just looked really funny today when I was flying out.

"Dubai currently has 270 completed highrises but that number will increase greatly in the near future. With b[]339 highrises under construction[/b] right now and 330 approved highrises (more than that already completed), including many skyscrapers and supertalls, Dubai's skyline is rapidly growing."

US Bank Tower in Los Angeles. Despite not having an impressive skyline considering how big L.A. is (this is mainly due to the insane sprawl of the city), this building is quite impressive. At 1,018 ft tall, it's the 29th tallest building in the world and the tallest building in the western United States. It also has the world's highest helipad.

""The Abraj Al Bait Towers is a building complex under construction in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Upon completion, the tallest tower in the complex would stand as the tallest building in Saudi Arabia and one of the tallest buildings in the world with a planned height of 577 m (1,893 ft).[1] If all seven towers are grouped together as one building, the structure would have the largest floor area of any structure in the world with 15.6 million square feet of floorspace. This is more than 4 million square feet larger than The Venetian Macau, which is the current world record holder.[2] The entire project is estimated to be completed in 2009.""

I still prefer the elevator mans def of high rise. If an elevator does not have at least 50 floors of hatch, its a mid rise. So 50 floors at 12 foot a floor(average) means if a building is under 600 feet is is probably going to have just mid rise elevators(20-45 stops).

"I still prefer the elevator mans def of high rise. If an elevator does not have at least 50 floors of hatch, its a mid rise. So 50 floors at 12 foot a floor(average) means if a building is under 600 feet is is probably going to have just mid rise elevators(20-45 stops)."

It is about both relative (to width), and absolute height.

If a building is 600 feet tall, but 2,000 feet wide, I don't think anybody would call it a "high rise". In the same vein, if a building is 10 feet wide and 50 feet tall, again, no one would call it a "high rise".

^well the thing I like about the CNA Plaza building is that even though you can see that it looks like most office buildings built in the 1970s it stands out with its red color, making it the only red building in Chicago iirc.

I love the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower in New York. I went by it a ton for some reason while I was in NYC recently. It was the world's tallest building from 1909 - 1913 until it was surpassed by the Woolworth Building in NYC. It is 700 ft tall and has 50 floors.